Soldier returns from Iraq, surprises children - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

Soldier returns from Iraq, surprises children

MOUNTAIN HOME, Ark. — All Jeanna Grcich wanted for Christmas was for her daddy to come home. On Wednesday, the 8-year-old got her wish when Sgt. Chris Grcich appeared in her classroom at Nelson-Wilks-Herron Elementary School after serving nine months in Iraq.

After standing in shock for a second, Jeanna dropped the Christmas card she and her sister, Caitlyn, 9, had been making for him and they both ran into his arms.

“Happy birthday, sweetheart,” Chris Grcich told Jeanna, whose birthday was on Tuesday and who wished for him to come home when she blew out the candles.

“You had no clue, did you?” he asked, hugging them both close and holding two bouquets of roses for them. Jeanna softly responded, “No.”

Grcich, 40, of Gassville returned to the states last week after being gone from home for more than a year.

A member of the Arkansas National Guard’s 224th Maintenance Company, he was stationed at the Al Asad Air Base in the Al Anbar Province with the 39th Infantry Brigade, B Company, 2nd Battalion, 153rd Infantry.

To keep the surprise a secret, the girls’ mother, Anna, 33, told them she was going to see a doctor in Chicago when she went to meet her husband at Camp Shelby, Miss. The girls stayed with their grandparents, Joseph and Christina Hedrick of Lakeview, and didn’t know he had come home.

Jeanna’s first-grade teacher, Brandy Sallee, helped orchestrate the plan. She wanted to surprise both girls at the same time so she invited Jeanna’s third-grade sister into her classroom to make the Christmas card for their father.

At the front of the classroom was a list of the class’s Christmas wishes. At the top of the list was Jeanna’s: “For my daddy to come home.”

Sallee called the Grcichs, who waited in the parking lot until the teacher sent a text message on their cell phone. They waited by the classroom door as Sallee told the class that Santa had a special surprise for both girls and suddenly they stepped inside the doorway.

Sallee and others watching had tears in their eyes as they watched the touching scene between father and daughters. He hugged them both for a long time and Jeanna later clung to his neck with a wide smile.

“I missed being there for them, seeing their beautiful smiles every day,” Chris Grcich said when the family sat down after the surprise, his smiling daughters never leaving his side. “I missed being a daddy and a husband.”

Grcich has been with the Arkansas National Guard for six years, he said. In 1987, he was with the U.S. Army Reserve and served in Desert Storm from 1990-1991. He left the reserve in 1992 and joined the National Guard in 2002. This was his first time serving in Iraq.

It was hard for his family when he left. He did not get to come home on leave during his deployment and the family kept in touch through phone calls and e-mail. It was especially hard on Jeanna, Anna Grcich said.

“She just crumbled,” she said.

Jeanna had stopped reading aloud, was crying a lot and was held back from entering the second grade, she said. The girls said their daddy had been gone so long, they had forgotten what he looked like.

“Now we look for things to really take off,” said Sallee, adding that Jeanna has been in the top of her class this year.

Now that the family is together again, they plan to spend a lot of time with each other.

Caitlyn said her favorite pastime with her dad is playing Monopoly.

“I always beat him,” she said with a smile.

Jeanna piped up and said she likes to sneak up on her dad while he is sleeping and put makeup on him.

“You’re not supposed to tell them that,” said her father, laughing.

The girls also plan to eat their traditional spaghetti supper on Sundays and eat their dad’s “award-winning” pancakes in the morning.

“I missed being a daddy more than anything,” Grcich said. “They’re my pride and joy.”